Building the New Guinea and Pampas Biotopes

At the end of this year (and it is still 2019), we returned to the bird house of the Warsaw Zoo, a building we know well. This time we faced the reconstruction of two aviaries at once and in an extremely short time, because the entire project was completed in 9 days.

We set this intense pace ourselves because of poor weather forecasts. The machines we used were operating outside the building, and we wanted to avoid working in low temperatures and rain. The basic assumptions of the modernization were to develop the central wall of both aviaries, which were twin rooms of the same size. We built themed environments representing two different biotopes: one of the New Guinea rainforest and the other of the dry South American Pampas.

Both aviaries were equipped with large planters extending along the enclosure walls. In the aviary imitating the Pampas, in addition to the planter, we created a shallow pool that the birds will be able to enter. The planter was connected with the pond into one coherent whole to maintain visual continuity. Natural tree roots were mounted on the central wall where we built an imitation landslide, and natural stones were embedded there as well. The aviary representing the New Guinea rainforest climate already had a pond built from natural stones.

Our intention was to connect the planter we were building so that it would not stand out from the natural stones already present in the enclosure. We also repaired the pond, whose basin had significant losses. The main wall of this aviary was built up with powerful blocks of artificial rock imitating boulders. We really wanted to introduce an accent that would distinguish this enclosure from others of this type, and we achieved that effect by building two kinds of stone blocks.

We have to admit that although we often encounter various complications that can extend our work on projects of this type, this time we managed to complete the task quite smoothly. Just as we had planned, all mortar work was finished on the last day of good weather.